Policy, not politics, is the key to understanding David Cameron

Barack Obama and David Cameron step off Marine One on Tuesday (Photo: AP)

Colleagues want the Prime Minister to be more partisan, but his discreet style is working

Like all good theatrical productions, a prime minister’s visit to Washington should offer moments of high drama and ripe comedy. Think of Tony Blair addressing an electrified Congress after 9/11. Or the Reagan White House briefing against Neil Kinnock minutes after he’d left the Oval Office. Or the moment when Boris Johnson asked Bill Clinton about his sex life. Or that time Cherie Blair’s hairdresser was left behind at Camp David, and a helicopter had to be sent to rescue him.

Chances are David Cameron’s three days in America will produce their own memorable highlights. A trip on Air Force One, an evening of college basketball, the rare presence of Samantha Cameron, and the protocol complexities of “an official visit with a state dinner” – as the White House has defined the sumptuous hospitality afforded a friend who is Prime Minister but not head of state – mean everything is in place for another “Colgate moment” to match the toothpaste diplomacy of Mr Blair and George W Bush.

No wonder the election planners at Conservative campaign headquarters are salivating at the prospect of useful footage showing Mr Cameron striking a statesman’s pose alongside Barack Obama. The White House may view the relationship as transactional rather than special these days, but for a British politician seeking re-election, this visit is what campaign videos are made of. All sorts of small calculations have been scribbled, about how it might help the party’s standing with ethnic minorities and how Mr Cameron’s deliberate snubbing of fractious Republicans in favour of the incumbent Democrat will promote his idea of nicer, modern Tories. This week is in part about stocking up on potent political images for 2015.

In fairness, Mr Cameron has so far resisted the allure of abroad. His premiership shows no sign of matching the globetrotting frenzy that marked Mr Blair’s. He has made the ritual visits to the big players, but there is no sense that abroad has become a haven against troubles at home. One of the successes of his administration has been a willingness to leave diplomacy to the Foreign Secretary who, along with the Chancellor, has been invited to join this week’s talks with the President.

In fact, ask Mr Cameron and he will tell you that he has no insurmountable political difficulties to escape from. The policy challenges are daunting, but the politics are manageable. If anything, he faults those who are trying to inject more politics where – he believes – none are wanted. To the Prime Minister’s mind, when the voters delivered an inconclusive result in 2010, they expressed a desire to see less politics, not more. What they wanted was for politicians to put country before party and to devote themselves to solving the nation’s problems, not to compete to score points off each other. Mr Cameron has a clear sense that his duty is to stay clear of politics as much as he reasonably can.

His view is not a fashionable one. His parliamentary party is working itself into a frenzy of frustrated ambition and political expectation. He is surrounded by colleagues who want him to be more partisan. They wish he would assert his party’s core beliefs against the growing tyranny of the Liberal Democrats, who seem to become stronger inside the Coalition as their position in the country weakens.

Tory backbenchers, in particular those who are not part of the increasingly vocal and influential 2010 intake, simmer with resentment at their lack of promotion prospects. They nurse resentments against the Lib Dems and some mutter about finding ways to force a snap election in order to confront Nick Clegg with his unpopularity. Those particularly preoccupied by Europe dream of challenging Mr Cameron over additional funding for the IMF to pay for the euro bailout, if it comes before the Commons. They threaten a confrontation if he shows any sign of trying to keep the Coalition going after the next election, or if he gives the Lib Dems a free pass in the event of a by-election in Eastleigh if Chris Huhne is forced to resign. In No 10, consideration is being given to a party management challenge that is expected to become more difficult as time passes. The reshuffle, now postponed until the autumn or next year, is likely to address the issue of the Whip’s Office.

From Mr Cameron’s end of the telescope, this is small beer. He tells friends how united the parliamentary party is and how little difficulty he faces from that quarter. He relies too on his polling, which shows the wider party, its membership and Conservative voters as a whole are overwhelmingly supportive not just of his leadership but also of the Coalition and what it is trying to do. He finds little difficulty in preferring the views of the party majority over a minority of backbenchers sent “loopy” – his word – by the Westminster hothouse.

He acknowledges that he needs to find ways of delivering a distinctive message that resonates with Conservative values. The charge that he isn’t enough of a Tory hangs over him and fogs the Conservative conversation. Yet he is wary of flashing his blue rosette. It may be a function of his office, but he is more at ease as statesman than as political leader. His backbenches want red meat, but to his mind Coalition is the absence of political war. It was noticeable, for example, that the Lib Dems put themselves through a painful spring conference, whereas the Tories didn’t bother with one. Mr Cameron instead delivered a low-key address on Saturday to the party’s national convention, in which he quoted Captain Scott about never yielding and said his first duty was to deliver a government that “does its duty to the people of the country”.

That’s the theme you hear more and more from Tory members of the Cabinet, who range themselves alongside Mr Cameron in resisting the siren calls for more political violence. Ministers feel they reached a watershed with the granting of Royal Assent to the Government’s welfare reforms a few days ago (and with the Health and Social Care Bill about to follow). This administration has not marked its second anniversary and already it has put through – with education – three major slabs of public service reform whose effects will be felt for years to come. Add to that the deficit reduction programme and the first hints – just hints – of recovery and a picture is emerging of a reforming Government that is demanding to be judged by deeds, not words. This is why Mr Cameron believes the Coalition will stay the course: because a majority of what it is doing is Conservative.

One Cabinet colleague puts it another way: “We should let our policies make our politics.” What the Government is achieving will do more to tell a Conservative story come the election than any number of poses struck in Washington or at Westminster. Until then, Mr Cameron will keep his politics discreet – and continue to fill the small book he carries with distinctly Conservative ideas for a Tory manifesto in 2015.